


Easy

by Sylph_of_Breath



Category: Homestuck
Genre: "Seasonal", Davekat Week 2020, Day 1, Fluff, M/M, Sappy, They said holidays count so I went with Valentine's Day, davekat - Freeform, implied sex, lead-up to sex, not actually explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:15:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28353042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylph_of_Breath/pseuds/Sylph_of_Breath
Summary: Dave tries to make up for years of will-they-won't-they-ing with Karkat by planning the perfect first Valentine's Day.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	Easy

You look in the mirror one more time. You look exactly the same as you did last time, hair slicked back, tie meticulously knotted, freshly shined shades reflecting the light from the ceiling. You look damn good, you’re not ashamed to admit it. Your appearance has never been one of your million and one insecurities, that's one thing you could thank your bro for, at least. But there’s not much else to do at the moment to distract yourself from your nerves other than continuing to check your reflection for any opportunities for improvement that you might have missed the last twenty times. Anything you could be looking at on your phone would only remind you of the incoming message you’re waiting on. So you look down at your shoes, your pants, your jacket, your sleeves, and you tug and adjust and brush for no real reason at all beyond the illusion of productivity. And when you’re done, you look in the mirror again. And you still look the same.

You turn around and look at your old room. It’s only been two months since you used to actually live here, but it still fills you with an irrationally powerful sense of bittersweet nostalgia, like visiting a childhood home where nothing’s changed over years and years. Things have changed in here, though. The closet is mostly empty, save for some of your rarely used formalwear. The nightstand, once a cluttered mess of books, empty apple juice bottles, half-empty cups of water, pill bottles, crumbs, and dust, is now clean and bare aside from your old lamp and alarm clock radio, blinking 12:00. There’s nothing randomly strewn on the floor, but there are a few bins and boxes neatly pushed against the walls- a few of Karkat’s things that he packed away to make room for yours when you officially moved in with him across the hall.

You remember your first day at the apartment so vividly. The two of you stood side by side in that very hallway, each with a box in hand, awkwardly glancing back and forth between the two doors. You mostly insisted he take the master bedroom as a perfectly normal, considerate, completely platonic way of making it clear that you were not expecting to share a room. The look on his face in that moment, disappointment poorly disguised as gratitude, was the first moment you knew that you’d blown it. You were both careful not to let it get to that point again for some time after that, but over the years, there would be many more such moments for both of you, each building the tension, making the next all the more difficult not to blow. Until one moment, two months ago, for some reason, somehow, you didn’t. It wasn’t by any means a spectacular moment like you’d both been waiting for, which is probably why you were able to not immediately slam down on the romantic self-destruct button out of sheer panic. You were watching a movie. He accidentally put his hand on yours, and without thinking, before he had time to pull it away, you just grabbed it, because you wanted it to stay, that’s all. Then he looked at you, and you looked at him, and then you kissed. And that was that. That’s what took you so long, but it was so unbelievably easy. You slept in his bed that night and every night until it was your bed too, and every night since, and it’s all, still, been so very easy.

So now this room, this bed, now perpetually pristinely made up, are nothing but a reminder of wasted time.

On the foot of the bed sit the carefully placed dozen red roses and elaborately wrapped box of the fanciest fucking chocolates you could find. You took an unreasonably long time debating whether to go with just the dozen roses or upgrade to the two dozen before, to the florist’s annoyance, deciding that the two dozen just looked like a bit _much_. But now, at a distance of a few feet, on the backdrop of the queen size bed, you can’t help but thinking the bouquet looks a little meager, and you mentally berate yourself for ever doubting that Karkat deserves a fucking comically giant-ass bunch of roses. Karkat deserves everything.

You started making actual arrangements for tonight- the dinner reservation, the surprise after-dinner carriage ride, the brand new custom suit, just a few days after you two finally made it official last December. But you’d be lying to yourself if you said you hadn’t been planning this night for years. You always knew that, despite the myriad of fuck-ups, _someday_ you would work up the courage to tell your best bro/roommate that you were madly in love with him, or that, preferably, he would tell you, but the years kept passing by and neither of you idiots made your move. So you spent every Valentine’s Day just like any other day, eating pizza and watching romcoms on your couch, but you mentally upped the stakes in your head for the inevitable first Valentine’s Day _Together_ you would one day spend with each passing year. If you count the meteor trip, the final tally is now seven years worth of overindulgent shamelessly commercialized romance that you’ve convinced yourself you need to make up for tonight. And the thing is, all of this is so unbelievably far out of your wheelhouse, you’re now freaking out about whether any of it is even enough for one.

Really, the only quintessential Valentine’s gift you could think of that you decided not to include was jewelry, because, well, Karkat doesn’t wear jewelry. Even still, you went back and forth on that decision countless times in your head as well. Maybe an unbelievably tacky overpriced diamond heart necklace would be worth it, just so you could both know that you _had_ thought of everything and spared no expense? But then, he'd feel pressured to actually wear the thing, and that would just be humiliating for both of you, so you ultimately decided against it. It even crossed your mind more than once to buy him a ring, but you’re not _that_ crazy. Well, no, you are, but he doesn’t need to know that just yet, not until you’ve gotten more confident that there’s still not plenty of time to scare him off. So you stuck with roses and chocolate, and now it doesn’t seem like nearly enough.

But it’s too late. Your phone finally buzzes.

carcinoGeneticist [CG] began pestering turntechGodhead [TG]

CG: HEY  
TG: hey  
CG: I’M READY NOW  
CG: SORRY FOR TAKING SO LONG  
TG: its cool we got time  
TG: omw

turntechGodhead [TG]  ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] 

You put your phone back in your pocket, take a deep breath, check the mirror one last time, grab your gifts, and set out on the very short trip across the hall. You take one more deep breath once standing outside your own current bedroom door, tuck your hand that’s holding the roses behind your back, and gently knock.

“UH, COME IN…”

The first thing you see is Karkat, standing in the middle of the room, hair combed in some sort of attempt at an actual style, in what appears to also be a new suit. His cheeks are unmistakably red, his hands are fidgeting idly at his sides, and he keeps shifting his weight back and forth between his feet nervously. You smile.

Then you notice the rest of the room.

Roses, red roses, are absolutely fucking everywhere. Every solid piece of furniture- both dressers, both nightstands, your bookshelf, his desk, even the fucking hamper, has at least one vase on it, and, yep, of course, that’s definitely two dozen in each. But that’s just the beginning. Nearly every square inch of the floor is covered in petals. Oh God, he even did the thing where he made a big heart out of rose petals on the bed, like it’s the honeymoon suite at a fucking Sandals resort or something. Lastly, you notice the candles, so many fucking candles that even with your shades on, you didn’t immediately register that the actual lights in the room were off. There must be at least a hundred, on the furniture, lining the windowsills, and dozens artfully arranged in each corner of the floor.

It’s like the ghost of Nora Ephron and the ghost of Nicholas Sparks had a ghost baby, and that baby projectile vomited over every inch of the place. In other words, it’s Karkat. In other words, it’s perfect.

You drop your bouquet.

“UH, HI. HAPPY VALENTINE DAY. I HOPE THIS IS, UH, OK...”

You consider trying to say something, but your senses are still so overwhelmed with the smell of roses and candles, the beautiful, grating sound of Karkat’s voice, and the sheer scope of this picture of perfect romance laid out before your very eyes, that you don’t think it’d necessarily be wise just yet. You have no confidence that what would end up coming out of your mouth would be even in the ballpark of cool, not even in the parking lot of the ballpark, not even in the shady discount parking lot five blocks away, so you keep your mouth shut for now and just keep taking it all in.

“I TRIED TO SET IT UP LIKE IN THE MOVIES, BUT I STILL WASN’T REALLY SURE IF I WAS DOING THIS RIGHT, SO I’M SORRY IF I FUCKED IT UP. I ALSO, UH, WANTED TO GET YOU, LIKE, AN ACTUAL PRESENT, TOO, BUT I COULDN’T DECIDE WHAT AND THEN I PANICKED AND THEN I RAN OUT OF TIME, SO, SORRY…”

You can tell that poor Karkat could really use a lifeline here, but your mind is still too rattled to risk anything beyond the undoubtedly stupid shocked expression currently frozen on your face. You really, _really_ , don’t want to like, fucking cry, or some shit like that...

“I JUST KNOW YOU HAVE A WHOLE BUNCH OF STUFF PLANNED THAT’S PROBABLY WAY BETTER AND SUPER ROMANTIC AND I REALLY WANTED TO DO MORE, NOT TO LIKE, TRY TO ONE UP YOU OR ANYTHING, JUST...UH…”

Now he’s looking like he’s trying not to fucking cry, or some shit like that, but since he’s already on his big verbal feelings trajectory, his safest bet is to keep moving forward.

“TO...SHOW YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU...I GUESS. CAUSE THAT’S WHAT THIS HUMAN FESTIVAL IS ALL ABOUT, RIGHT? BUT… I DON’T KNOW, NOW I JUST FEEL KINDA STUPID CAUSE LIKE, THIS ISN’T ENOUGH. AT ALL. SO...SORRY…”

“Karkat, shut the fuck up.”

Probably not the best thing you could have gone with, that much Karkat makes pretty clear in his absolutely mortified reaction. OK, how to ease it back a little?

“You’re actually unbelievable, do you know that? Like, I struggle daily to literally believe you’re real.”

“WHAT?”

Yeah, you can see how that might be open to some interpretations other than the incredibly sincere and tender declaration of love you intended it as. Especially since you have a tendency not to really emote with your voice. Dammit. Words are failing you. Fuck words.

“Just shut up and fucking kiss me, dude.”

That much he doesn’t need to be told twice.

The two of you close the distance between yourselves almost instantly. Arms and hands flail unceremoniously for a few seconds, before deciding where to land- yours around his waist, his clutching your face. It’s not much longer before you unbutton your jacket and let it slide off your arms onto the floor behind you. You unbutton Karkat’s and push it off, running your fingers all the way down his arms before settling them back around his waist, and pulling him in closer. He makes a happy little whimper sound against your mouth when you do so, and your already addled mind is officially lost. You wrap your hands around his thighs and pull his legs out from under him, and he cooperatively wraps them around you. You fly him the two or three feet to the bed and plop him down. You make quick work of undoing his tie and top button, freeing up his perfect neck for you to kiss. Meanwhile, your hands continue down his shirt, button by button, listening intently to the sweet sounds of his little moans and gasps.

“DON’T WE...HAVE...A...RES... _OHHH_...RESERVATION…?”

“Perks of dating a Time God.”

You lean back and snap your fingers, eyeing him smugly, and the clock on the wall stops ticking and the flickering candle flames still.

“OK, COME THE FUCK ON, STRIDER, I KNOW THAT SNAP WAS COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY YOU INSUFFERABLE FUCKING SHOW-O…”

You shut him up with another kiss. It’s so easy.

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Day 1 of Davekat week 2020, prompt is "Seasonal." I'm a bit Christmased out at the moment, so I decided to write about the Valentine's Day "season," which is definitely a thing!


End file.
